As professionals, we often work very quickly and sometimes forget to stop and pay attention to the details. I was unfortunately reminded of this recently while working with a third-party vendor. We were dealing with an invoice which was ultimately going to be sent to my client. It took three rounds of changes to get the factual information on the invoice correct – spelling of names, cities, etc. I thought to myself that if someone would have just looked over it once, the blatant errors would have been caught. Further, had I not looked at the invoice and instead forwarded it directly on to the client, the errors would have reflected very poorly on me.
No matter what it is that you are working on, be it an email or an invoice, leave yourself enough time to go back and check your work for the minor stuff. This might seem like a no-brainer for most; however, the details can add up, and you don’t want more negative ones against you than positive ones in your favor. I recall a saying to the effect that if a client is happy with your work, they will hopefully tell one person; if they are unhappy, they will tell ten people.